Country of origin: Italy

Price: £500 second-hand

Franchi has always made good guns, but for many years its importing history into the UK could be described as “chequered”. When I worked in Sporting Gun’s main editorial office, I lost count of the number of readers who phoned me seeking spares. Then Beretta took Franchi over, and this put the importing into the capable hands of GMK, and numbers of good guns, and the spares, started to flow in.

I’ve picked the Harrier because, I believe, this was a current gun at the time of the Beretta take-over, although there are other good Franchi models which fit our price.

The Harrier has an extremely simple, robust mechanism, and has 3in chambers and barrels which have been subjected to steel shot proof. The ventilated top rib tapers from 10mm at the breech to 6mm at the muzzles. Five long multichoke tubes were supplied with new guns, together with the original ABS case.